


men who have a future

by Aslee



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, M/M, episode tag: mountain party finale, y'all are gonna start using Emmanuel's full name if i have to drag you there myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 22:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11217114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aslee/pseuds/Aslee
Summary: Lem King stews in his room after getting roasted by Grandpa God.





	men who have a future

**Author's Note:**

> title is an Oscar Wilde quote; either a personal one or one from Dorian Gray
> 
> uuhhhhhh that's it

Samol's words sting in ways that Lem isn't ready to admit. 

They sound so much like Fero, in a way-- "Don't be so obsessed with past, Lem; The future doesn't matter. Go home. Be happy with the time you have left." Maybe it's the fact that he can hear Fero's voice echoing after Samol's that makes it all seem so mocking. Even when he leaves the table, tucked into his own room, he can hear the words follow him. More voices have joined, the countless people who have handed him the same trite advice, over and over. 

Be happy, they chant, as he rummages through the cupboards, desperate for a distraction. Why can't you be happy? 

As if Samol even knows what happiness for Lem looks like. 

Lem sinks to the floor, bitterness and defeat rising high and sour in the back of his throat. The God of Everything looks at Lem King and sees a man for whom music is happiness. The thought would make him scoff, if he could breathe around his emotions. He's had his fill of music, and played his share of audiences. Maybe if he had left the Archives earlier, Lem could make a life on the stage, but now all he knows are the sharp, shattered notes of war. 

The sweetest things he plays now are idle things in the dead of the night, his yearning for things he doesn't deserve translated into warm whole notes that fade into the frigid air. Love songs sell tickets, but those songs belong to only one man. A man who Lem is beginning to dread he'll never see again. 

Lem knows where his happiness lies. 

It's not... entirely in Emmanuel's hands. Lem is still himself enough to know that the whole thing would just end up being a large pile of resentment and stale bread. But Emmanuel is a terrifyingly big part of it, because Emmanuel represents everything that Lem never even thought to dream of, before they met. 

A home, for one. A home that's just his, and maybe one day just theirs. Sheets that he buys and cleans himself, the sun shining through white linen. A husband, maybe, his big hands marked with old callouses. Hours, days, without equations and variables and notes tumbling around in his head. Something to look forward to besides another chapter, another road. Warm tea and scones in the morning. A familiar smile. 

There was something, once, that Lem thought he'd found with Fero. Not a home, but something almost like it, but now when Lem dreams, the broken pieces of their relationship seem like shadowy echoes. Like something he forces, when all he really wants to do is sit, and breathe, and let Emmanuel make him tea. 

"Find a bakery," Lem repeats, his frustration turning the words into a snarl. 

He's found his bakery, thank you. That's the whole problem. 

Forget Lem's mission. Forget Hieron, forget the Gods, forget Hadrian's never-ending existential quandaries and the trouble it always gives them. Wipe the slate clean, and it is just Lem, and he still cannot just go home. 

There's a bakery that needs to be saved. 

The Heat and the Dark sits atop Rosemerrow, and every time Lem thinks of it, that sick purple against the sky, his stomach lurches. Sometimes, he cannot even wrap his mind around the concept of it, and he has to think of it in small, sad pieces. The doorway where he saw Emmanuel again is Nothing. The blanket that smelled of tea is Nothing. The kitchen, where Emmanuel pushed him against the counter and kissed him until the tension melted from his shoulders, is Nothing. A thousand dreams, suddenly Impossible. 

Lem was never a philosopher, but now he wonders if that means they never existed at all. 

He doesn't suppose it matters, really. He's finally taking Fero's advice; Now is all that matters. And right now? His Future is Nothing. There are no bakeries for him, no great audiences, or Kings to swear fealty. Lem has exactly one thing left to his name:

Lem King was sent here to do one last Something.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me at @grandwretch on tumblr


End file.
